Small Town Investing

[Trevor Ewen]

Interested to hear thoughts from those with experience in very small town investing. My general mentality is very city focused. 

I have some new opportunities coming down the pipe in Buena Vista, Virginia. This is a very small town. There are some good fundamentals: local universities, steady employment nearby, low prices. That being said, I don't know what I don't know. Thanks.

Particularly interested in hearing from Brandon Turner, since he has experience with the Montesano, WA market. He always talks about the 'Po-dunk' aspects of REI.

[Paul Ewing]

If there is a university it can't be too small!  I deal in rural, semi-rural, and small towns in about a 20 mile radius of my home.  The towns (incorporated and unincorporated) range from 1,200 people to 11,000 people.

The word of mouth thing is very important.  Your tenants will start telling their friends and coworkers about you and you will start getting people checking to see if you have any open properties.  It is kind of nice to know I now have a list of a dozen or so people that want to be contacted when I get an opening. 

I am also finding that I can get better rents than I could in the city by maintaining good properties.  It is also much easier to find the inexpensive gem homes scattered around because you don't really see have as big of an issue with cheap equaling war zone neighborhoods.  You will have a 20-30 year old singlewide a quarter mile down the road from (next door neighbors in many cases) to a $300,000 custom home.  If you put some effort into cleaning up the MH and making sure everything is repaired you can get a pretty good working class family in it especially if it is on an acre or so of land so they can have animals.  Speaking of which I have a whole lease addendum for livestock talking about pigs and how they must be kept, how many chicks can be brooded in the house, how and for how long,  saying yes a baby goat can be kept in the garden tub for up to a week old, which you don't see in them fancy city slicker leases.